Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [144]
“Twelve of nuestra gente are dead,” Ana said. “Not counting the children, eight were strong and healthy.” She couldn’t say it, but Severo understood—eight fewer for the cane.
Severo sent Efraín to track Dr. Vieira, but the doctor had traveled to Portugal to visit relatives. Other than the apothecary in Guares, there was no medical professional within a day’s ride of Los Gemelos, so Ana, Flora, Fela, Pabla, and even Conciencia took care of the sick or those who showed symptoms.
Ana rushed from the barracks to the bohíos to the infirmary, feeling more helpless with each sign of illness, each death. Sixty-two-year-old Oscar, twenty-nine-year-old Poldo, twenty-three-year-old Carmina, and five-year-old Sandro. Sixteen of seventy-eight slaves died in seven days.
She lived meters from them, delivered their babies, baptized them, taught them the Lord’s prayer and how to follow and respond to the decades of her rosary. She stitched their clothes, distributed their rations, salved their wounds and injuries. She was closer to them than to the servants who raised, dressed, and fed her in Spain. She was even closer physically and emotionally to them than to her parents. Now they were dying in agony, and the only thing she could do was to drip bitter liquid into their mouths and tell the survivors that the dead were going to the heaven she promised them in Sunday services. She prayed, but as her people continued to die, the empty prayers formed a ball of rage in her chest, hardening until she felt its pressure. You have abandoned me, she said to God, unafraid that it was humility he expected from his people.
As Conciencia predicted, the lieutenant rode up, escorted by soldiers who looked warily around, eager to get away as soon as their business was over. Severo galloped in from a near field, and still mounted, the men stood under the breadfruit tree to talk in low voices. After the soldiers left, Severo joined Ana on the porch, where she stood waiting, her face pinched by anxiety.
“Cholera, as you suspected,” Severo said. “It’s also in San Bernabé, Guares, and the hamlets around us.”
“What can we do?”
“Quarantine the sick, burn everything they’ve touched, avoid contact.”
“How are we to take care of them?”
Severo seemed not to have considered this. He looked at Ana, then at Conciencia, who lowered her eyes. The gesture, which in the slaves was a sign of respect, irked him coming from the girl.
“I’ll put the older ones in charge of the sick,” he said. “Send your remedies, but don’t go into the barracks, the bohíos, or the infirmary while there’s sickness there.”
“But—”
“I mean it,” he warned her.
“They need me,” she said to the air, because Severo was already ordering men to erect sleeping ranchos far from the noxious buildings. Within hours, the sick were moved to the men’s barracks and Fela, Pabla, and seventy-year-old Samuel were assigned to tend the dying, whose pitiful wails for water rent the nights.
Anyone with signs of illness was banished to the barracks: thirty-seven-year-old Juancho, forty-five-year-old Hugo, six-year-old Juan, three-year-old Chuíto, thirty-year-old Jorge. Jacobo carried his thirty-two-year-old wife, Tita, in his arms and as soon as he relinquished her, went back to his bohío for his little girl, Rosita, and a few hours later his son, Chano. Jacobo was born in Africa and as a young man ran away from his first hacienda, was caught and whipped, then sold to Los Gemelos. A few weeks after Ana arrived there, he stole a machete because he planned to run away again and Severo whipped him. His screams reached Ana in the casona the same day she told Ramón and Inocente that yes, she’d punish a slave if she had to. Today, as Jacobo returned to his bohío, no matter what he might have done, Ana would be unable to add to the punishment already meted out by God and Severo. Jacobo walked from the barracks with his head bowed to